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I was expecting to see them in their hundreds but we never saw one when we where there. Why? Are they seasonal or area specific? Whilst in Addo a couple of years ago, we saw lots and had all to do in order to miss them with the car.

Titbit: In the first edition of Jock and the Bushveld a dung beetle was shown pushing a ball of dung with its front legs. Unfortunatly for the artist, dung beetles use their back legs, resulting in reprints of the book being necessary!

We normally try and enter KNP in the far north and work our way down to the south. The lack of dung beetles in the greater part of the Park is something that I notice on every trip. The largest concentrations we normally find around Pretoriuskop, but we also get them in other areas close to the South of the Park.

Dung beetles are a relatively modern group of beetles and their fossils only extend back to 40 million years ago. They belong to the family Scarabaeidae and are also known as scarabs. They are scavengers, which feed on dung and other decaying organic matter, and play an invaluable role in keeping the veld clean.
The ancient Egyptians revered them as a symbol of renewed life. Khepri was a scarab god of the sun and the important symbolism came from the scarab's rolling his ball of dung then taking it down into the soil from where new life later emerged. Hence Kepri rolled the sun across the sky and buried it each evening, was born anew in the morning and rolled the sun across the sky again. Egyptian priests seem to have thought that the scarabs ball of dung was equivalent to his egg, they believed all sacarbs were male therefore, because he did not need a female for reproduction. They reasoned that if both the sun and a scarab beetle could be reborn in a special container in the ground then why couldn't people. It is now believed by some modern scholars that the Egyptian mummy in its tomb/pyramid was a representation of the pupa of S. sacer in the remains of its ball of dung in the earth. Scarab amulets became immensely popular and remained that way for centuries and are the most common archeological relics from the N. African region.

They are small to large, usually stout-bodied, and are easily recognized by the 3 to 7 segmented fan-like antennal club. Their legs are powerful, particularly the front legs, which are armed with teeth on the outer edge. In some species the legs are adapted to rolling balls of dung to a suitable soft spot, and for digging holes in which the dung is buried. The buried dung serves as a source of food for adult beetles, and also for the larvae when they hatch from eggs laid on the dung-balls.
Each brood ball contains a single egg and is coated in a clay shell. The parent beetles abandon the chamber soon after the eggs have hatched.
The larvae, also called white grubs, are greyish-white to bluish-white in colour, C-shaped, and also feed on decaying organic matter, such as tree stumps, and the roots of plants.

In 1973 a guy called Jo Anderson recorded the action as it happened at a small 1.5 Kg pile of Elephant dung on the African savannah. In two hours that small pile of dung attracted 16 000 dung beetles of various shapes and sizes, who between them had eaten and or buried that dung completely in just those two hours. Typhaeus typhoeus the Minotaur Beetle (A UK species) can dig burrows up to one metre deep

All dung beetles are scarabs, but not all scarabs are dung beeties. For instance, the protea beetle (Trichostetha fascicularis) gathers nectar from various species of proteas.

Dung beetles serve a number of very important ecological functions. The digging activity of tunnelling beetles results in the aeration of soil as well as the transfer of nutrients to the soil by releasing the nutrients in the dung. Also, dung beetles break down dung and prevent flies from breeding in it.
Since cattle and other members of their family (the Bovidae) are not indigenous to Australia. where marsupial herbivores such as kangaroos occur instead, there are very few insects other than flies that feed on their dung. Over the years. flies have reached epidemic proportions in the grazing areas of Australia, and the accumulation of unburied cow-pats has made pastures repellent to domestic stock. In order to control the flies and to destroy the pats, at least four species of South African dung beetles have been introduced into Australia. Unfortunately, the experiment has been only partly successful and the problem is still being investigated.

wildtuinman wrote: Also rhino dung seems to be a favourite. We were told on the bushman's trail that if you were to dig in a rhino "toilet" that you would find them.

This will be the group belonging to the para- and endo- coprids
the Endo coprids live in the dung and the para coprids under the dung (midden) these two dung beetles groups do not roll balls of dung. (some species of para coprids will roll a ball and bury it directly under the dung) The tele- coprids are ball rollers ...
There are almost a 1000 different species of dung beetles in Southern Africa. They are also the only insect where pheromones are produced by the male and not the female..

Question: I bought a dung beetle, encased in resin, at the Lower Sabie shop (in sept.) for my nephew, such a beautiful beetle,.... but if there are fewer around....you don't think it's 'cos they're harvesting them for us crazy tourists....do you?????? I just assumed they picked up dead one's, is that naive?